St
Margaret was one of a swathe of Suffolk churches which
suffered redundancy in the 1970s. In those days,
redundancy was a serious business; unlike today, when all
manner of trusts exist to take on the care of unwanted
churches. Back then, redundancy usually meant an offer of
sale for conversion. For an unlisted, largely 19th
century, church like St Margaret, this process was
limited to three years, after which an order for
demolition automatically followed.

Fortunately,
St Margaret was not demolished, and neither did it become
a private house. Uniquely in Suffolk, it was bought by
the village, who still own it as a charitable trust to
this day. And, of course, the quality of the building is
now recognised, and today St Margaret is safely listed.

I first
came this way in the late 1990s. On a number of bike
rides, I had seen St Margaret off in the distance, and
thought how lovely it looked. I said on the first entry
for it on this site that there is a sudden thrill, like
unexpectedly catching the eye and smile of a pretty girl.

Closer to,
it doesn't disappoint; the graveyard is full of 19th
century trees, overwhelming in their maturity. The whole
thing is a perfect piece of Gothic drama. Mind you, it
wasn't always Victorian in appearance. This was a
medieval church once, but its tower fell, and like many
Suffolk churches it was pretty well derelict by the 19th
century. The chancel was rebuilt as recently as 1907; the
western part of the nave with turret looks about forty
years earlier than that.

On my
first visit, I couldn't find the medieval glass that Cautley had seen here in
the 1930s. A few months later, I found it down the road
at Mendlesham, along with a
brass which Cautley had also seen. They had been removed
on redundancy. The brass is to Margaret Armiger, in the
1570s; the glass includes a figure with the head of a
lion. You can see images of them which I took in 2002
below; click on them to enlarge them.

Until my
revisit of 2007, I had never been inside this church. The
door is always locked, and there is no keyholder listed.
However, when I had pointed this out six years earlier, I
had received a number of e-mails from people in the
village telling me that I was welcome to knock on their
door and ask for a key. I hasten to add that there is no
reason at all for St Margaret to be kept locked, except
for the singular reason that, unlike just about every
other church building in Suffolk, it is private property.
The church is set at the end of a pretty close, and I was
told that virtually all the houses in this close have
keys.

Well, we
tried them all, but as you may have guessed, there was
nobody at home. Incidentally, from a security point of
view, it is far better to leave a church open than to
give people a reason to knock on the doors of all the
houses around to discover that nobody is at home. If,
instead of being harmless amateur historians and church
explorers, we had been in possession of an evil intent
and a white transit van, we could have broken into the
church and cleaned up. As it is, St Margaret contains
nothing of value, but even so...

We
extended our search to the top road, and finally found
somebody in. It took a bit of persuading for her to let
us in; she was not terribly keen, I must say. And once
inside, she didn't let us out of her sight for a second,
although most curiously she did say that she would prefer
it if the church was kept open all the time.

Perhaps
the most interesting feature inside is the fine 15th
century font, similar to the one up the road at
Worlingworth. It is topped by a 17th century font cover.

St Margaret is a
typical rural church of the ordinary people.
Being redundant, and a proud possession of the
village, it is very well cared for, rather than
being left as a refuge for the Sunday club. The
four decalogue boards which were formerly below
the east window are now reset at the west end.
There are two good windows, one of St Margaret in
the west wall, and a beautiful Arts and Crafts
cross in the south side of the chancel. No church
in this part of Suffolk is complete without its
Henniker memorial, and Southolt's dates from
1792, but more moving is the WWI plaque to
Charles Marchant of Athelington House, who died
in France on October 4th 1918. He was just 24
years old. There are more Merchants in the lovely
graveyard outside.